The visible trail of my journey from reluctant fundamentalism, into evangelical by conviction of Jesus as the only way, charismatic by encounter with the Holy Spirit, postmodern by choice, to protestant mystic as a sensible response to God's presence

Imagine That! – Part 1

Those with an interest in exploring and understanding how the human brain operates, and the relationship between brain and mind, generally operate with an overriding assumption – that the human mind is alone, isolated from all other minds except for communication processes relying on the five physical senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, and the ability to speak, write, draw, gesticulate, etcetra.

Some enthusiasts also posit extra-sensory perceptions, human to human, human to animal, and sometimes human to other entities. Such investigations are not held in high regard by the general scientific and medical community, I believe largely because of their assumptions that other entities do not exist, and that all processes are determined entirely by operation of the physical brain.

Leaving out, for now, speculative ideas like ESP, five physical senses would be enough for simple communication and interaction. However, this neglects the possibility that a considerable amount of human interaction is of a much more direct, though largely unconscious nature. Such neglect is one result of another common assumption – that human beings do not have a spirit that is not merely a function of the mind or the brain.

Let us put all of that aside for now and examine a hypothetical scenario. Just suppose that:

humans have a spirit,

there exist other entities that have, or are, spirits, and

spirit can communicate directly to spirits.

The question I now want to ask is: what type of faculty within a human being would be needed for such spirit to spirit communication to take place?

Because a spirit does not have a physical form, the physical senses are not likely to be of much use. Rather, I suspect that some form of direct transfer of information would be more likely. In other words, what one entity “sends” to the other would simply “appear” within the receiving entity’s mind.

Note, I am not talking about what is usually called ESP. Most of the explanations that I have seen for ESP ability assume some form of brain to brain transfer, perhaps by means of electromagnetic waves. This is analogous to normal human thinking being enhanced by some form of radio system controlled by the mind, allowing the thoughts to be transmitted to another person. What I am considering here is a more basic ability, but it might also provide a better explanation for what has been thought to be ESP phenomena as well.

Most understandings of the nature of spirit allow it to be unconstrained in some degree by time and space, so a physical transmission medium would not be essential. Rather, two spirits might simultaneously occupy a single conceptual space for the duration of their interaction. Again, here “space” is not necessarily physical relativistic space. If it is actually physical space then an alternative possibility is that spirits might have access to relativistic dimensions apart from the normal Einsteinian space, such as are commonly drawn on in current attempts by physicists to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. This is a subject I will write more about another time.

Let us now go back to our question of the nature of the faculty the human mind would need to support spirit to spirit communication and to provide a spirit/mind/brain interface. From the perspective of a person receiving such a communication, the “message” would simply appear in the mind as a thought, picture, memory or emotion, or by the impression of a sound, smell or physical sensation as the body responds to the information.

Similarly, transmission would occur by simply thinking, visualizing, feeling, etcetera, the content to be communicated. Interestingly, visualization has become a popular technique among some New Age and humanist groups in the attempt to try to change reality. Such use and abuse of visualization is something else I will write more about later, but suffice it to say that even in its misuse the principles remain the same, only the motive or the intended recipient has changed.

The human mind already has a faculty that appears to fulfill all of the functions described above. It is called the imagination.

In Imagine That! – Part 2 we will explore further the role of the human imagination in perceiving the spiritual realm.

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